The sleeve notes reference Ornette – with Dewey Redman and the Art Ensemble of Chicago thrown in for good measure – but anyone anticipating music of that somantic power might at first be puzzled. The opening track, ‘Long Road’, is oddly reminiscent of the debonair way Humphrey Lyttelton's latter-period bands managed to incorporate subtle hints of ska and South African jazz into what amounted to a post-Count Basie mainstream sound, spoken with a discernible English accent. But trumpeter Loz Speyer has always had plenty to say about overlaps in the Venn diagram between composition and improvisation, and Life on the Edge slowly reveals itself to be more multidimensional and exploratory. Chris Biscoe and Rachel Musson -rooted in the likes of Dolphy, Rollins and Coltrane and UK free improv – present a dream team who sail through the Ornetteian obstacle course presented by the head of Speyer's ‘Unfold Entity’, while Musson's solo, an inexorable sortie that meanders with clear purpose in and out of the changes, is an album high point. It's the strut of Olie Brice's burly, pepper hot bass and Gary Willcox's drums that kick-starts ‘Long Road’; but the integrity they bring to the emerging free jazz push-pull structure of ‘Space Music’ pilots the musicians further towards destinations unknown.